[Gene]

Worked for a few days helping out. Welder was a very old and was a very wore out old Lincoln Ideal Arc 250 that had no ideal what a Ideal Arc was! It came on the Arc if I'm any judge. This was my first time using Lincoln 5/32 Wearshield® 60 Hard Rod. This is the real world of some shops. On a working welder I tested one of the rods and it did run well at about 160 Amps.

[GWD]

I've found that you really have to lay on the amps to get hardfacing rods to work right for some reason.

I have some 3/16" Stoody 31 that will take every bit of 200A and want more.

http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?t=178581

[noddybrian]

The stability & open circuit voltage of the welder influences hard facing rods a fair bit - if your lucky enough to have a voltage control go to at least 70 volts - I tended to use up to 90 volts on the older " Petbow " sets that had separate amps and volts controls - no matter what you run most rods do not run smoothly & most don't like to work out of position - I was always taught to keep amps to the absolute minimum to avoid dilution with the parent metal ( except when buttering the first layer on new material ) 160amps for a 5/32 seems OK - but no 2rods run the same - I would probably be running more like 140 with " Murex " rods. I would think the inverters with adjustable " Dig " would be good for this type of work but never had the chance to try one - it's always outside some place with an engine drive.